Aya Takano is an artist based in Kyoto and Tokyo, who belongs to Kaikai Kiki, a group of young artists organized by Takashi Murakami. Takano plays with the concept of Japonisme, while also incorporating forms and ideas from cartoons, anime, science fiction, and erotic art...

Perhaps more than any other Kaikai Kiki artist, Takanos work is the exemplification of Japans post-war cultural affluence, and its overwhelmingly diverse, yet aesthetic unification of information.
With inspirations varying from 14th Century Italian religious painting to alien evidence to MTV, Takanos worlds are shiny and futuristic, yet soft and full of traditional and sensual imagery...

Trained in the popular art form known as kawaii (cute) as an illustrator for Nintendo video games, Aya Takano portrays endearing, wide-eyed androgynous figures with slender bodies, their extremities are systematically reddened, as if to illustrate their extreme sensitivity. For the Japanese, her work is technically irreproachable. Her mastery of drawing and color, combined with her capacity to work exceptionally quickly, is so great that Takashi Murakami has compared her to the brilliant Hokusai, the 18th-century painter and printmaker...